


The Duke

by Ayes



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Age Difference, DDLG, Duke Silver, F/M, Implied/Referenced Cheating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 02:03:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12471028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayes/pseuds/Ayes
Summary: One night in the month she was named after, April Ludgate goes to see a show. She's no stranger to the press of pits, the hectic energy of dance clubs and gay bars. She's been to hundreds, she guesses, of house parties. But going to see Duke Silver is different.





	The Duke

One night in the month she was named after, April Ludgate goes to see a show. She's no stranger to the press of pits, the hectic energy of dance clubs and gay bars. She's been to hundreds, she guesses, of house parties. But going to see Duke Silver is different. 

When Tom confided Ron's big secret in her, after four shots of Jaeger and some annoying cologne samples, she could barely register the potential for humiliation. She'd come to the bar specifically to lose respect for her straight-laced boss in the most hilarious way possible, and with lots of drinking. But when Ron comes out in his stupid hat she's already had two mojitos and a whiskey sour, and his sick magic seems to be working. 

He's lit up and in his element, strong and self-possessed. The cheesy porno music he's saxophoning isn't just working on the cougars in the room - this must be why the seventies were so disgusting, because it's affecting her. When the set is over she slips into his line of admirers, scrolling in her head through dozens of potential insults. He nods and grins his way down the row of women, paying each one a specific attention to the point where she knows that he hasn't seen her. Until he does. "Hello, Duke," she says, deliciously grinning. She's spinning drunk at this point, and laughs outright at Ron's panicked face. 

"April." His face is tilted and concerned, but she is warm with booze and kind of wet for some reason and doesn't care. 

"That was rad. I won't tell anyone, I was going to, but I wouldn't want to, like, hurt CD sales." Ron relaxes visibly, but still isn't holding himself all smooth jazzlike. "You need a drink?" 

"I do indeed." Ron orders two shots of whiskey and she determinedly swallows hers, keeping the look off her face when the taste in her mouth makes it hard to keep down. "You really liked it? I'm surprised," he says to her, what feels like three seconds later when the club is emptying out and they're sitting in a corner booth. 

"I have hidden depths, man." April defends herself broadly, clutching a glass she doesn't remember emptying. "I drove a riding tractor through the mall." 

"Stop bragging," Ron tells her firmly, tucking her hair behind her ear. 

\-- 

It's a surprise when they have sex on the cot in his woodshed but since it's on the way back from town then maybe it's not a surprise. Except for the sex part.

She's not a virgin or anything, in fact she's been with tons of guys, or at least three more than her stupid sister. But Ron does sex like he learned it from someone better than David Knockelhurst because she was bored and felt like it, age seventeen. He's super old so it makes sense that he heard about sex from the people who wrote the Kama Sutra or something. Or maybe none of her thoughts are making sense like usual, but now it's not something she needs to mask in aggression, it's just because he's making her crazy and if she doesn't keep her mind off of it then she's gong to come and make her whole chest turn red and face look stupid.

"Ro-on," she says, wiggling her hips away from his cock, but but he misinterprets her warning and pulls her back again, his hand swallowing her hip and his stomach landing against hers. When she twists again he literally slaps her clit and doesn't seem to mind when she goes red everywhere. 

\-- 

When she wakes up his lips are already on the back of her neck, right behind her ears where she likes it, his fingers curling around her hip, and the head of his dick burning pressure against her ass. "I can't sleep," he says, and April forces her eyelids open. 

"Me either," she says loyally, wiggling her ass back against him. They have slower, sobering sex somewhere around five thirty in the morning, and the clarity dawns between them at some point to where they finish without any eye contact and then separate, awkwardly, to opposite points of the cot. It's still good though, and the cot is so small their asses touch, which is kind of funny, even though her head feels like shit. 

\-- 

Her Art History essay is due in three hours and even if no one ever remembers that she goes to school around here, she does, and she's also kind of trying not to fail. So at lunch she sits at her desk editing on Word, an e-mail window open to her teacher like it will make her write about Manet and Monet any faster. Ron dropped her off at her house in the morning, and she'd showered and changed, and only been about an hour late. Leslie hated it when she was late, but they're both Ron's employees and as April can sometimes restrict Leslie's access to Ron, April considers herself slightly more powerful, even if highly underpaid. 

Ron hasn't tried to talk to her, but since it's lunch he's been sitting in his office eating a steak sandwich and staring her down. Her essay glares at her, and it's not like she isn't hungover on top of all of this. April can feel a cluster headache coming on. Impressionists? She thinks that she was writing something about impressionists, so she finishes her sentence up and hits send. Nothing wrong with being a C student, that's what landed her this stupid job, that and her sister not waking her up that one morning. 

Ron has snuck up on her somehow, despite weighing two hundred and like, thirty pounds, basically twice her, and he's staring her down. She glares at him through her eyelashes. "April, have you received the faxes from the insurance company for our outdoor festivals this summer?" 

"Um, no, I think that they might need me to um. Send them that fax number." She talks breezily, as if to blow him off course, but it isn't working. 

"Okay. See that it gets done." He taps her desk with a stack of papers, lingers. "Perhaps, if you're not busy later, you could come by my home. Do you remember where it is?" 

"Yeah, I think so." Donna is staring at them, steadily, through her thick bangs. "What is this in regards to?" Ron frowns. She wishes he were easier to read, but she just stares back at stupid Donna as he gives her some excuse. Nosy secretaries, big surprise. Secretaries fucking their older bosses, not much of an original plan either. 

\-- 

It's still cold outside and she leaves her snowboots at the door, toeing off her wet socks too and jamming her feet between the couch cushions when she goes to sit down. Ron brings her a Stella with just enough foam for show. Most guys her age could contribute a Keystone, maybe, but she wouldn't bring it up now. 

She'd expect Casa de Swanson to have aggressive reds, maybe the heads of a pack of wolves, but instead it's full of rich blues and wooden paneling, and it's both soothing and heavily suggestive to her nervous mind that she is underwater. Ron sits beside her on the couch. She gets the unsettling feeling that he is going to lecture her, but instead he claps her hands in his and looks her over. "What happened last night was a mistake," he starts.

She rolls her eyes. "I won't tell anyone," she says, cutting to the chase. "Even if we do it again."

Just like that he is on her in an overwhelming way, that came out of nowhere and left her unsure of his number of teeth and hands. 

\--- 

She likes him because he never plays video games, doesn't try to throw her in any ponds or mess up her hair. He should smell like beef jerky but he doesn't, he never does. He just smells good, manly, like pepper and dark water as if he's been out fording rivers without misplacing a hair on his upper lip.

"Also what about your neon gangster fedora hats?" she says on the phone, and he punishes her later. Their romance builds like a dubstep remix does, the slow quiet start of it dropping suddenly into something that is heated and moving in dozens of parts, growing in a rich and vulgar way. The things that should disgust her about him, like the sneaking around, his chest hair, all of it just works for her somehow. Twenty-one seems like too old to feel like this much of a dirty little girl, but that's how he makes her feel lately. She and Ron don't really talk about it, and on it goes. 

\-- 

He comes back from a budget meeting with the new guys Chris and Ben, and she knows that Leslie has pushed it from ten minutes to forty, which in Ron Government Time is about two and a half hours. 

His eyes are half lidded and his words are coming out with his jaw mostly shut. This means his back hurts and she brings him a coffee, two sugars, because the one time she put milk in his coffee he made her pour it out while giving her a lecture on how cows are good for only one thing, and that was steaks.

\--

She starts dating Andy. He can't blame her for something inevitable, so she doesn't tell him, and if he figures it out he never mentions it during their extracurricular activities. 

One time she comes back late from Ron's, or whatever girl name she'd given Andy. Ron's mustache has left burns on her thighs and she really didn't want to leave the sticky heat underneath his covers, especially since she sees less of him these days. Andy is playing the same three chords repeatedly when she returns home, and somewhere between that and the mac and cheese on her DVDs they get into a fight. Andy tells her not to get so upset and she tells him he can just leave because they aren't even in anything, relationships don't mean anything, sex doesn't hold people together. 

When he asks her to marry him it's a surprise, but she says fine, and goes to shower. 

\-- 

"Where did you get these breakfast burritos?" She asks him, forty minutes before the fancy party when her hoodie is still zipped up and Ron is just heating the grill for everybody arriving. He arches an eyebrow at her and she laughs. "Nevermind." For a moment she picks through the beans and cheese, feeding him bacon as he works. As all the steaks are set up, she stares past his shoulder. 

It's weird because everyone that she knows is here and she's never even been to this house before. Ron's thumb rubs up against the side of her thigh before he resumes eating, and she turns back toward him. "I'm nervous." 

He rumbles out of his burrito, swallows, wipes his moustache with the back of his hand. "About what, little girl?" Oh right, the wedding is a secret. In the living room, her sister goes down a hall and April sees her chance to avoid a jacket showdown. She sprints off, leaving Ron outside, to change, but forty minutes later he is back to find her, and he has figured it out. 

She's upstairs in the bathroom still, and maybe Leslie told Ron where she was because he follows shortly after her, draining her good mood and leaving her clammy. There is noise from downstairs and they just stare at each other. It's like the house is alive and they are its ghosts, the way she feels right now. And they are haunting each other. 

"Don't get married," he says, his intensity freezing her in place. "I have to," she says finally, glaring at him. "I said yes and my parents are here and this dress is white, Ron." It's the only way that people can belong to each other. 

He says I see, and the fucked up thing is that he likes Andy, she knows he does, but life doesn't make sense. Like work and weekends she has Andy and Ron - real life, and the extra hours stolen on the things that don't define you. Right? Maybe she's just confused. But she's never been one to admit that before. 

And after she marries Andy she feels truly happy, for almost the entire night. Ron avoids her gaze and she never gets another quiet moment with him. She doesn't for weeks. 

\-- 

Six months down the line being married is pretty much just as boring as being in a relationship. 

Wait. 

Ron's sausage fingers find their way up her skirt sometimes, late at night, because she knows he likes to fuck the government every way possible. This is one of those times, and she rocks and twists against him, leaned back on the desk. He's banging her spine into things and making her arch away more than she would, but he seems to like the friction. 

It's fucked up maybe, but there's something in her that wants to be closer to Ron, to touch him sometimes, and it's not like he has anyone else to soothe his rumblings. He must like her too, and if the guilt eats him up at night, or regret, she doesn't ask. She's compartmentalizing it all, ignoring her inner dialogue, making jokes to herself about everything the way she's always done, to be tough. And even though she's mostly happy, really, the best times are stolen, and pornographic, and not that infrequent some months. April starts to tense up against Ron's body, their hot breaths mixing between them and his pants around his ankles. And he takes her from nothing into nowhere she's ever been.


End file.
